Sunday, September 28, 2014

+ This past week, of course, the plaque
for the memorial garden we dedicated in

May was finally finished. It will hang on
the wall near the circular window on the stairs leading down to the Undercroft.
I am proud of our memorial garden and what it will, hopefully, one day be. A
resting place.

But I am
especially proud of our memorial garden because of something that we, at St.
Stephen’s, make sure will happen with it. In our policies for the memorial garden,
we make no disctinction about who can be buried there. Some churches state that
only members and their families can be buried in their resting places. Nowhere
does it say that only St. Stephen’s members can be buried in our memorial
garden. And, a clear policy is this one:

Under no circumstance
will anyone be denied burial in the memorial garden due to financial reasons.

This, of
course, ties in perfectly to the ministry we have been doing here at St.
Stephen’s for years. Something as simple as this policy really does hit home for
us. There are not many places in the Fargo-Moorhead
area that allow such an open policy regarding burial.

Now what
few of us know is that, just a few blocks north of this church, there are two
cemeteries. Unless you actually get out
of your car and walk into the actual cemeteries you wouldn’t even know they’re
there. And I do invite you to go and
visit theses cemeteries. If you do, you’ll
see, in each, a large boulder.

In one cemetery the boulder is
inscribed COUNTY CEMETERY #1. This one
is located at the end of Elm Street. Where
the road forks, one to the Country Club and the other to the former Trollwood,
right there, on the left fork toward Trollwood, is the cemetery. You’ve probably driven by it countless times
and never had a clue.

County Cemetery #2 is located on the
other side of the old Trollwood, just within sight of where the old main stage
stood. Back along the bend in the Red
River, there is a stretch of grass and another boulder. This one says COUNTY
CEMETERY #2.

A third County Cemetery was located on
north Broadway. In 1984, those graves
were moved to Springvale Cemetery, over by Holy Cross Cemetery, near the
airport, because they were falling into the Red River through erosion. One of
my great-uncles, who died in 1948, is actually buried in that cemetery.

For the
most part, many of the graves in Springvale are marked. But in the first two cemeteries, there are no
markers at all. No individual
gravestones mark the graves of the people buried in the first two cemeteries.
In fact, if you walked into them, you would have to force your mind to even accept
the fact that it is a cemetery. But
there are hundreds of people buried in those graveyards. Hundreds.

These are the forgotten. These were Fargo’s hidden shame. Beginning 1899 and going through the 1940s,
this where the prostitutes, the gamblers, the robbers were buried. This is also where all the unwanted babies
were buried. There are lots of stories
of unwanted babies being fished out of the Red River in those days. This is where the bodies of those unnamed
babies were buried.

And when one walks in those pauper
cemeteries, one must remind themselves of those words we hear from Jesus this
morning in our Gospel reading.

“Truly I
tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the Kingdom of
God ahead of you.”

There, in those cemeteries, lie the
true inheritors of the Kingdom of God. Last
week in my sermon I quoted the great Reginald Fuller, who said:

“[This] is what God is doing in Jesus’
ministry—giving the tax collectors and prostitutes an equal share with the
righteous in the kingdom.”

That—and those words of Jesus we heard
in this morning’s Gospel reading—are shocking statements for most of us. And they should be. It should shock us and shake us to our core. It’s a huge statement for him to make. Partly
it does because, things haven’t changed all that much: we can grasp the
understanding about prostitutes—after all, prostitutes are still looked down
upon by our society in our day.

After
all, we do still view prostitutes with contempt. They are another segment of our society that
we tend to forget about. But we really
should give them concern. And I don’t
meant from a judgmental point of view. I
mean, we should give them our compassion. We should be praying for them often. Because we often hear the horrible stories of
what people have to deal with on the streets, not to mention what drove them to
the streets.

. But the
stories of what keeps them on the streets are just as bad. And the dangers they face—day and night—are
more mind-boggling than anything we can even imagine in our safe, comfortable
lives.

Truly prostitutes throughout history
have been the real exploited ones. They
are the ones who have lived on the fringes of society. They are the ones who have lived in the
shadows of our respectable societies. They
have lived dangerous, secret lives. And
much of what they’ve had to go through in their lives is known only to God. They need our prayers. They need our compassion. They definitely don’t
need our exploitation. They certainly don’t
need our judgment.

As uncomfortable as it is for us to
confront them and think about them, that is exactly what Jesus is telling us we
must do. Because by going there in our
thoughts, in our prayers, in our ministries, we are going where Jesus went. We are coming alongside people who need our
thoughts, our prayers, our ministries. And rather than using them, rather than
continuing the exploitation they have lived with their lives, we need to see
them as God sees them. We see them as
children of God, as fellow humans on this haphazard, uncertain journey we are
all on together.

And, more
importantly, we see in them ourselves. There, but for the grace of God go us. Had we been born in different circumstances,
had life gone wrong for us in certain areas, who are we to say we wouldn’t have
been there? Or who we are to say we
wouldn’t be the exploiters?

So we can understand why prostitutes (and
tax collectors, who were just as ritually unclean as prostitutes in Jesus’ day)
were viewed with such contempt in Jesus’ day.

The point
of this morning’s Gospel is this: the Kingdom of God is not what we think it
is. It is not made up of just people
like us. It is, in fact, going to be
made up people who maybe never go to church, who may never have gone to church.
It will be made up of those people we might
not even notice. It will be made up of those people who are invisible to us. It
will be made up of the people we don’t give a second thought to. In our society
today we have our own tax collectors. They
are the welfare cases. They are the
homeless. They are alcoholics and the
drug addicts and the drug dealers. They are the lost among us, they are the
ones who are trapped in their own sadness and their own loneliness. They are the gang leaders, they are the
rebels. They are the transgendered. They are the cross dressers. They are the ones we call pagan, or
non-believer or heretic. They are the
ones we, good Christians that we are, have worked all our lives not to be.

This is what the Kingdom of heaven is
going to be like. It will filled with the
people who look up at us from their marginalized place in this society. It is the ones who today are peeking out at us
from the curtains of their isolation and their loneliness. They are the ones who, in their quiet agony,
watch as we drive out of sight from them. They are they inheritors of the
kingdom of God and if we think they are not, then we are not listening to what
Jesus is saying to us.

When we
think about those county cemeteries just a few blocks north of here, we need to
realize that had Jesus lived in Fargo, had he lived 1900 years later and had
died the disgraceful death he died, that is where he would’ve ended up. He would have ended up in an unmarked grave in
a back field, on the very physical fringes of our city. In fact, he is there. And in our policy for the memorial garden, we
are guaranteeing he will be here among us as well in our memorial garden. He is wherever the inheritors of his kingdom
are.

Those
cemeteries and that policy in our memorial garden for me are potent reminders
of who inherits. They are potent reminders
to me of who receives true glory in the end. It is these—the forgotten ones,
the ones whom only God knows—who are in glory at this moment. They
are the ones that, had life turned out just a bit different for us, would be
us.

Of course, we too are the inheritors of
the Kingdom, especially when we love fully and completely. We too are the inheritors when we follow those
words of Jesus and strive to live out and do what he commands. We too are the inheritors when we open our
eyes and our minds and our hearts to those around us, whom no one else sees or
loves.

So, let us also be inheritors of the
Kingdom of God. Let us love fully and
completely as Jesus commands. Let us love our God. Let us love all those people who come into our
lives. Let us look around at those people who share this world with us. And let us never cast a blind eye on anyone. Let
us do as God speaks to us this morning through the prophet Ezekiel: Let us
“turn, then, and live.”

Sunday, September 21, 2014

+ If you’re anything like me—and I
hope you’re not like me—who would want to be like me?—one of the biggest
complaints, maybe rages is a better word, that I sometimes make at God is this
one:

“This is all so unfair!”

Usually I’m raising a fist to the sky
when I say it. And yes, I do rage at God sometimes. It’s a spiritually healthy
thing to do. And, trust me—God can take our little rages.

But I would say that my most common
rage at God is about the unfairness of it all. The unfairness of life. The
unfairness of the way things seem to work out sometimes.

After all, we’ve been conditioned, to
some extent. Things should be fair. A perfect world would be a fair world.

So, when it seems that God is not
fair, we rage. We get angry. God should be on our side on this one. But, it
seems, not always is God on our side on some things. The scale of fairness is not always tipped in
our favor.

To put it in the context of our Gospel
reading today, I often feel like one of the workers who has been working from
the beginning of the work day. The
parable Jesus tells us this morning is, of course, not just a story about
vineyard workers. The story really, for
us anyway, is all about that sense of unfairness.

If you’re anything like me, when you hear
today’s Gospel—and you’re honest with yourself—you probably think: “I agree
with the workers who have been working all day: It just isn’t fair that these
workers hired later should get the same wages.”

It’s not fair that the worker who only
works a few hours makes the same wages as one who has worked all day. Few of us, in our own jobs, would stand for
it. We too would whine and complain. We
would strike.

But the fact is, as we all know by
this time, life is not fair. Each of
here this morning has been dealt raw deals in our lives at one point or
another.

We have all known what it’s like to
not get the fair deal. We all have felt
a sense of unfairness over the raw deals of this life. But, as much as we
complain about it, as much as make a big deal of it, we are going to find
unfairness in this life.

Of course, our personal lives are one
thing. But the Church—that’s a different
thing. What we find in today’s parable
is exactly what many of us have had to deal with in the Church. The story of
the parable is that everyone—no matter how long they’ve been laboring—gets an
equal share. And in Jesus’ ministry,
that’s exactly what happens as well.

As one of my personal theological
heroes, the great Reginald Fuller, once said of this parable: “[This] is what
God is doing in Jesus’ ministry—giving the tax collectors and prostitutes an
equal share with the righteous in the kingdom.”

The marginalized, the maligned, the
social outcast—all of them are granted an equal share. To me, that sounds like the ministry we are
all called to do as followers of Jesus. To be a follower of Jesus is strive to
make sure that everyone gets a fair deal, even when we ourselves might not be
getting the fair deal.

And there’s the rub. There’s the key. Being
a follower of Jesus means striving to make sure that all of us on this side of
the “veil” get an equal share of the Kingdom of God, even if we ourselves might
not sometimes. That is what we do as
followers of Jesus and that is what we need to strive to continue to do.

But…it’s more than just striving for
an equal share for others. It also means
not doing some things as well. It means
not letting jealousy and bitterness win out. And that’s probably what we’re going to feel
when others get a good deal and we don’t.

Jealousy and envy are horribly
corrosive emotions. They eat and eat
away at us until they makes us bitter and angry. And jealousy is simply not something followers
of Jesus should be harboring in their hearts.

Because jealousy can also lead us into
a place in which we are not striving for the Kingdom. Those of us who are
followers of Jesus are striving, always, again and again, to do the “right
thing.”

But when we do, and when we realize
that others are not and yet they are still reaping the rewards, we no doubt are
going to feel a bit jealous. We,
although few of us would admit it, are often, let’s face it, the “righteous”
ones. We the ones following the rules,
we are the ones striving to live our lives as good Christians.

We fast, we say our prayers
faithfully, we tithe, we do what we are supposed to do as good Christians. Striving for the equal share for people, means
not allowing ourselves to get frustrated over the fact that those people who do
not do those things—especially those people whom we think don’t follow the
rules at all, those people who aren’t “righteous” by our standards—also receive
an equal share. It means not obsessing
over the fact that, “It’s not fair.” Even when it is unfair.

Because when we do those things, we
must ask ourselves a very important question (a question I ask a lot): why do we do what we do as Christians? Do we do what we do so we can call ourselves
“righteous?” Do we do what we do as
Christians because we believe we’re going to get some reward in the next life? Do we do what do because we think God is in
heaven keeping track of all our good deeds like some celestial Santa Claus? Do we do what do simply because we think we
will get something in return? Do we do
what we do so we can feel good about ourselves at the end of the day? Or do we do what we do because doing so makes
this world a better place?

This is the real key to Jesus’ message
to us. Constantly, Jesus is pushing us
and challenging us to be a conduit. He
is trying to convince us that being a Christian means being a conduit for the
Kingdom of God. In us, the Kingdom breaks through. Without us, it simply will not.

We do what we do as Christians because
whatever we do is a way in which the barriers that separate us here from God
and God’s world is lifted for a brief moment when we do what Jesus tells us to
do. When we live out the Law of loving
God and loving our neighbor as ourselves, the “veil” is lifted and when it is
lifted, the Kingdom comes flooding into our lives. It does not matter in the least how long we
labor in allowing this divine flood to happen. The amount of time we put into it doesn’t
matter in the least to God, because God’s time is not our time. Rather, we simply must do what we are called
to do when we are called to do it.

Jesus came to bring an equal share to
a world that is often a horribly unfair place. And his command to us is that we also must
strive to bring an equal share to this unequal world. And that is what we’re doing as followers of
Jesus. As we follow Jesus, we do so
knowing that we are striving to bring about an equal share in a world that is
often unfair.

We do so, knowing that we are
sometimes swimming against the tide. We
do so, feeling at times, as though we’re set up to fail. We do so feeling, at
times, overwhelmed with the unfairness of it all. And just when we think the unfairness of this
world has won out—in that moment, the Kingdom of God always breaks through to
us. And in that moment, we are the ones
who are able to be the conduit through which the God comes.

So, let us continue to do what we are
doing as followers of Jesus. Let us
strive to do even better. In everything we do, let us attempt to lift that veil
in our lives and by doing so, let us be the conduit through which the Kingdom
of God will flood into this unfair world. And let us do together what Jesus is calling
us to do in this world Let us love—fully and completely. Let us love our God, let us love our selves
and let us neighbors as ourselves.

As we all know, it’s important to come
here and share the Word and the Eucharist on Sundays. But we also know that what we share here
motivates us to go out into the world and actually “do” our faith.

As followers of Jesus, we are full of
hope—a hope given to us by a God who knows our future and who wants only good
for us. Let us go forth with that hope
and with a true sense of joy that we are doing what we can to make that future
glorious.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

+ A few weeks ago in my sermon I started
my sermon on a, shall we say, dire note. I don’t normally like starting my
sermons on a such a note. Dire sermons are not always helpful sermons. But, I
said, on that Sunday, that if you come into church and see red paraments—the
red altar frontal, the red hangings, the red chasuble—be prepared. We are
commemorating something not so pleasant. In that case, I was talking about
martyrs.

This morning, we have the red on. No,
we’re not commemorating a martyr. But, sadly, we are commemorating something
not that pleasant either. This morning we are commemorating probably the one
most important symbols of who we are as Christians. We are commemorating the
Holy Cross.

My good friend, Father John-Julian of
the Episcopal religious order, the Order of Julian or Norwich, writes about
this very important feast in his wonderful book, Stars in a Dark World. He writes:

“It is noteworthy, I think, to see that
the Church celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross not with the penitential
purple of Lent or the mortal black of Good Friday, but with the brilliant
passion red of celebration and honor! And the propers of this feast do not
dwell on the bloody death of Christ but on rather upon the wonder of the
utterly holy [instrument], because the executioner’s instrument has been
exalted as the means of the salvation of the world. The salvic resurrection of
Christ transformed the gross and ugly Cross of death into the most enduring
symbol of life and hope.”

Now, we probably really think about the
Cross as an object too often. We find of take it for granted. We see it every Sunday. We see them on the
churches we pass every day. We probably
wear the around our necks or hang them on the walls of our homes.

For us, of course, the Cross is more
than just two pieces of wood bound together. For us the Cross is our symbol. And
more than that.

We have essentially been branded with
the cross. Each of us were marked by the
Cross in our baptism. And as a result, it is ingrained into our very souls.

And we have been told by the One we
follow that to truly follow him, we must take up our own cross. Again, not
pleasant to do. But it is essential. This symbol of death and degradation has
been given to us and we are told to bear it with all the strength and dignity
we can muster, just as he did.

I’ve shared this quote with you before,
but I love this saying by Blessed Charles Grafton, the former Bishop of Fond Du
Lac, Wisconsin. He said that our job as Christians is to “preach the Cross from
the Cross.”

It is not enough for us just to tell
others about the Cross. It is not enough to just acknowledge this piece of wood
as our symbol. Essentially in bearing the cross, we must realize that we are also
bound to the cross, and there we die to our former selves—our egoistical
selves, our self-centered selves. And while there, while we hang there with the
One we follow, to preach—by example if nothing else. This is what the Cross is
to us.

Look at
how deceptively simple it is. It’s
simply two pieces, bound together. For
someone who knows nothing about Christianity, for someone who knows nothing
about the story, it’s a symbol they might not think much about.

And yet
the Cross is more than just another symbol in our lives. The Cross is what
truly defines as Christians. Without it, we would be utterly lost. Without it,
our faith as Christians would be essentially powerless. Our hope, our longing,
for eternal life, for the destruction of death by Jesus, would never have been
accomplished without it. Without it, we would still be digging in our heels in
fear over death.

So, yes,
the Cross is essential to us as Christians. It is what gives our faith its very
essence. The Cross, as much as it
defines us, as much as it is symbol of our faith, is also, sadly, an instrument
of torture and death.

To take
up a cross means to take up a burden that we must bear, even though we don’t
really want it. To take it up is
torturous. It hurts to take up the
Cross. When we think of that last journey Jesus took to the place of the skull,
carrying that heavy tree on which he is going to be murdered, it must’ve been
more horrible than we can even begin to imagine. And, without the resurrection, it would have
been.

But the
fact is, what Jesus is saying to us is: carry your cross now. Carry it with
dignity and inner strength. Because if
you carry cross, then you are truly following Me. By carrying our cross, we are
following Jesus to the place he leads. That
place, is of course, the joy of Resurrection and Life.

But the
road there leads first through the place of the skull. To face this reality, we find ourselves facing
our fear of pain and death. We sometimes
allow ourselves to slip deeply into fear and despair in our lives.

As we all
know, fear can be crippling. It can devastate us and drive us to despair. But, as Father John-Julian says,

“In a
sense, the Cross underwent the first transformation of the Resurrection; and
that same transformation has been part of the salvation offered by the
Crucified and Resurrected One. Pain and death became resurrection and
exaltation—and that has never changed. The sign of the Christian’s salvation is
not some giddy, mindless, low-cost bliss, but rather an entry into the deeper
parts of the reality of pain and death [and I would add, fear], soaked, as was
the Holy Cross, with the blood of sacrifice and finally emerged, brought by God
on the other side, resurrected, exalted whole, and in heaven.”

If we
take the crosses we’ve been given to bear and embrace them, rather than running
away from them, we find that fear has no control over us.

The Cross
destroys fear and pain and death. The
Cross shatters pain and death into a million pieces. And when we do fear, we know we have a place
to go to for shelter. When fear encroaches into our lives—when fear comes
riding roughshod through our lives—all we have to do is go to the Cross and
embrace it. And there, we will find our
fears destroyed.

As
Anthony of Padua said: "Extending his arms on the cross like wings, Christ
embraces all who come to him sheltering then in his wounds.”

Because
of the Cross, we are taken care of. Because
of the Cross, we know, all will be well. The cross Jesus asks us to bear is not
a frightening and terrible thing. It
was, at one time. It was a symbol of
defeat and death and pain and torture. It was, for the people of Jesus’s day,
what the electric chair or the hangman’s noose or even the lethal injection
table is to us this day. It was, for the
people of Jesus’s day, a symbol of ultimate defeat. On it, hung criminals. On
it, hung those who, by society’s standards, deserved to hang there. On it hung
the blasphemer, the heretic, the agitator.

But now,
for us, it is a symbol of strength and joy and unending eternal life. Through it, we know, we must pass to find true
and unending life. Through the Cross, we
must pass to find ourselves, once and for all time, face-to-face with God.

So, let
us notice of this great symbol in our lives. As we drive along, let us notice
the crosses on the churches we pass. Let us notice all the crosses that
surround us. When you see the Cross,
remember what it means to you.

Look to
it for what it is: a symbol of terror and death, but also a symbol of the power
of God to overcome terror and death. Let us look at the Cross and, when we see
it, let us see it for what it truly is: a triumph over every single fear in our
lives. When we see the crosses in our
life, we can look at it and realize it is destroying the fear in our own life.

And more
importantly, let us continue to bear those crosses of our life patiently and
without fear. If we do, we too will be
following the way of Jesus, and that Way doesn’t end at the Cross. Rather the
Way of Jesus—that Way of Life unending, Life Everlasting,--really and truly
begins at the Cross.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

+ We’ve been doing this a lot lately in our sermons. We have been
traveling around a lot through time. We went back a few months ago to 1974, to
1964. Well, today, we need to go back too. We’re going back to a bit more
stable time—a more innocent time. Our
trip is taking us back 58 years.

It is Sunday morning, September 9,
1956. On this particular Sunday in 1956,
it was truly a different American. The country was caught up in Elvis-mania. In fact, that very night Elvis would appear on
the Ed Sullivan Show—“coast to coast with your favorite host.” The number one
song in the country was “Que Sera Sera” by Doris Day. The number one book in the country that
morning was Peyton Place by Grace
Metalious. One of the top movies was The Bad Seed withNancy Kelly and Patty McCormack.
It was based on a play by Maxwell Anderson, who was from Jamestown, ND.

1956 was an election year. The
current president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, would be going up against the
Democratic hopeful, Adlai Stevenson, who would lose that November.

But on this morning, the congregation of St. Stephen’s was
officially dedicated. According to the
records, there were 51 people at that service. It we think hard enough, we can
almost imagine how people looked in church that morning. The women in hats and skirts, the men in suits
and ties. And no doubt it felt like something was truly beginning.

By the end of that year, there would
be 51 communicants (39 of whom came from the Cathedral) and a total of 94
baptized members listed. By 1958, there
were 144 baptized members and 45 families and by Jan. 1, 1960, there were a
whopping 214 members with 60 families.

Over the years, those numbers just kept going up. Within ten years, in 1968, the membership
reached its number of 243 members.

Now, the story of St. Stephen’s is fascinating. In these almost 60 years, there have been ebbs
and there have been flows. And
throughout those 58 years this seemingly small congregation has been the first
do many wonderful things.

+ The first woman Senior Warden in the
Diocese.

+ The first woman priest to serve a congregation in the diocese.

+ The first congregation in the diocese to openly and unabashedly
welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

+ The first to establish a chapter of the Episcopal Peace
Fellowship.

+ The first to have a labyrinth.

Of course, there were hard time too. I have heard with great sadness the stories of
what is called the “Exodus out” in the 1980s. It is sad to look through the parish records
and see those numbers drop and dribble away for various reason throughout the
1980s.

But, here are, back in our own day. Here we are on this glorious morning in
September of 2014. Here we are, 58 years
into our ministry to the Church and the world. And we have a lot of celebrate this morning. I’ve
had to catch myself a few times over these last few years so I do not fall into
the trap of taking for granted what God has given us here at St. Stephen’s.

Just six years ago, in 2008, our membership was 55 members, which
had remained pretty steady for about ten years previously. But this year, we
can rejoice in the fact that we have more members here than we did in
1958. But we are more than just any of
those things. We are more than just
membership numbers. We are more than
just an Average Sunday Attendance (which really has been good, by the way). We are a congregation that makes a difference.

Now, I know some people have joked
about my so-called “cheerleading” of St. Stephen’s. But I take my job as cheerleader seriously. I have no problems with boasting about what
God has done here. I have no qualms
about boasting about what all of us are doing here at St. Stephen’s.

In our wonderful reading this morning
from St. Peter, we find him saying,

“Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy.”

When we look around us this morning, as we celebrate 58 years of
ebb and flow in our congregation, we realize that truly we are on the receiving
end of a good amount of mercy. We
realize that mercy from God has descended upon us in this moment. And it is a glorious thing. And, as
unbelievable as it might seem at times, we cannot take it for granted. We must use this opportunity we have been
given. We realize that it is not enough to
receive mercy. We must, in turn, give
mercy. And we have done that here.

Now, I know some of us get a little
uncomfortable when words like “liberal” or “progressive” are used to describe
us. But, I think we should embrace our “progressive” title. Progressive for us
means embodying mercy. When we look around us at other congregations, we
realize we have something special here.

I hear stories again and again (and
all of you have too) of churches that judge, that alienate, that become so
caught up in rules and dogmas and following the smallest interpretation of the
word of scripture, that they ride rough shod over others. Many of us were members of those churches
before we came to St. Stephen’s. Many of us came here with our bruises, with
our scars from those churches. Many of us came from those churches in which
they forgot that the Church is not an exclusive country club for the elite few
who all look alike, but rather a glorious and wonderful meal at which everyone—no
matter who they are or what they or what they’ve done—are welcome.

I think we have done that very well
here at St. Stephen’s. To those other churches, we might look like some ship of
fools. But to God we are what the Kingdom will be like one day. If you want a
glimpse of what awaits us, just look around as this morning. This is that
place.

Here, mercy dwells. Mercy, as we all know, is elusive. We can’t pin it down. But we know it when it comes to us. And we know how to be merciful to others.

The way we properly and truly celebrate 58 years of St. Stephen’s
ministry to the Church and the world is by giving thanks for the mercy we have
received and are receiving at this moment. And we turn around and share that mercy with
others. That’s what we’ve been doing
here at St. Stephen’s from that very beginning way back in 1956.

We, this morning, are being called to echo what St. Peter said to
us in our reading this morning. We, God’s own people, are being called to
“proclaim

the mighty acts of [God] who called
[us] out of

darkness into [that] marvelous light.”

We proclaim these mighty acts by our own acts. We proclaim God’s acts through mercy, through
ministry, through service to others, through the worship we give here and the
outreach we do from here.

I love being the cheerleader for St. Stephen’s. Because it’s so easy to do. God is doing wonderful things here through
each of us. Each of us is the conduit
through which God’s mercy and love is being manifested.

In our collect for this morning, we prayed to God that “all who
seek you here [may] find you, and be filled with your joy and peace…” That
prayer is being answered in our very midst today. And although it may seem unbelievable at
times, this is truly how God works in our midst. God works in our midst by allowing us to be
that place in which God is found, a place in which joy and peace and mercy
dwell.

So, let us continue to receive God’s mercy and, in turn, give
God’s mercy to others. Let us be a place
in which mercy dwells. Because when we
do we will find ourselves, along with those who come to us, echoing the words from
our reading from St. Peter this morning,

About Me

Jamie Parsley is an Episcopal priest & poet. He is the author of twelve books of poems. In 2004, he was named an Associate Poet Laureate of North Dakota. He currently serves as the Priest-in-Charge of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Fargo, North Dakota.